Tag Galaxy: Flikr Images to create a 3D photo-sphere

Do you know anyone, especially students, who would not rather have a lesson spiced up with pictures?   Now, this  is  an amazing tool to work  with and  just plain fun! Tag Galaxy appeals to all visual students and it helps spice up a boring lesson. Have I  just said” boring lessons”??? Sorry! a slip of the tongue!!

How does it work? Easy peasy! You enter a tag  – I wrote Hobbies-  and as soon as you click GO , you will see a 3D galaxy with lots of planets of different sizes. The biggest one is for my Tag ( in this case Hobbies) and the smaller  planets will be words related to the keyword orbiting around my keyword

At this point you might click on another planet to combine words ( Hobbies+ books) and form a new galaxy.

Click on the big planet and see your picture collection , straight from Flikr  assembling.

Spin the globe  with the mouse. Click to select a picture and get a close -up. Cool!

Tag Galaxy in the classroom: I’m sure my students will be delighted to watch the whole process but leaving aside the cool part, I think using this wonderful tool can be highly motivating for my students.

♥ At the moment I’m teaching  Simple Past tense to my Elementary students and  I’m planning to use it  to do some speaking with the structure:

When did you last….? (play football)

I last( played football )( three weeks ago) +  the follow up questions.

♥It could also work  for Picture Description

♥Writing Skills: Students are given the beginning of a story such as: it was a stormy night … Students write “storm” as the keyword and the picures will help them spark their creativity.